


be my shelter

by seeingrightly



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:54:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23223586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seeingrightly/pseuds/seeingrightly
Summary: Eddie feels bad.He’s not sure anymore what set him off in the first place or what caused it to spiral this badly. He can’t see very far past the fact that he feels bad and he shouldn’t, that he should just get over it, that he should be able to feel better on his own without asking Richie to help. He knows Richie would help if he asked, but he can’t make himself do it, because he shouldn’t have to. It’s been a long time since he’s texted Richie back.This happens, sometimes. He gets stuck. He feels like he can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t think. It’s stupid. He’s an adult, he’s been through much worse than a bad day, and yet - in the couple of months since fucking Derry, this keeps happening. It’s like there’s too much in his head, now, too many things he doesn’t want to remember, too much he doesn’t understand yet. One day his head might explode.Richie’s getting better at telling when it’s happening, reading between the lines of how Eddie’s texting him or not. That’s the thing about living in the same city now; that’s the thing about having Richie back in his life, this new, big version of Richie, too much to comprehend, always loud, always around, especially when Eddie needs him to be but can’t say it.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 12
Kudos: 89





	be my shelter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [retrovertigo (ellameno)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellameno/gifts).



> this is for tommy who prompted "blanket fort" and "listening to their heartbeat/breathing." i hope you enjoy it!!
> 
> theres detailed descriptions of anxiety thought processes in here so read with caution if that can be upsetting for you
> 
> title is from "sanctuary" by aly & aj

Eddie feels bad.

He’s not sure anymore what set him off in the first place or what caused it to spiral this badly. He can’t see very far past the fact that he feels bad and he shouldn’t, that he should just get over it, that he should be able to feel better on his own without asking Richie to help. He knows Richie would help if he asked, but he can’t make himself do it, because he shouldn’t have to. It’s been a long time since he’s texted Richie back.

This happens, sometimes. He gets stuck. He feels like he can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t think. It’s stupid. He’s an adult, he’s been through much worse than a bad day, and yet - in the couple of months since fucking Derry, this keeps happening. It’s like there’s too much in his head, now, too many things he doesn’t want to remember, too much he doesn’t understand yet. One day his head might explode.

Richie’s getting better at telling when it’s happening, reading between the lines of how Eddie’s texting him or not. That’s the thing about living in the same city now; that’s the thing about having Richie back in his life, this new, big version of Richie, too much to comprehend, always loud, always around, especially when Eddie needs him to be but can’t say it.

Richie leans on the buzzer like the asshole he is when he shows up at Eddie’s apartment, unexpected but not. The sound breaks through the fog and Eddie is able to move, though slowly, his muscles stiff, uncurling from his kitchen floor and hobbling over to buzz Richie in. Before he loses momentum, he goes and unlocks his door, and then he sits. The door almost clips him when it opens a minute or two, and Richie lets out a little yelp as he almost trips over Eddie’s legs.

“Jesus, Eddie,” he says, recovering and closing the door.

He steps over him and places a bag of takeout on the kitchen table, and then he comes back, sitting down on the floor. He takes off his jacket and then his shoes, dropping them in a pile he’ll likely trip on later, and then he leans back against the wall like Eddie. It’s good, that Richie is here, that he’s here without Eddie saying anything. He still can’t say anything. He doesn’t move away, and Richie takes that for the signal it is that he can lean in a little closer and let their shoulders touch.

It’s good. It’s good that their shoulders are touching. It’s good that Richie is here. It’s good that he’s not making Eddie talk, because Eddie can’t talk. He’d have to breathe to talk, and he can’t do that, he can’t breathe, his chest is too tight, like his lungs don’t work, like they never have, like he’ll never be able to talk again.

It doesn’t happen often, that Eddie can’t talk, that he shuts down like this, normally he’s got something to say about everything, but when it hits, it hits hard. It feels like everything he might say is the wrong thing to say. He can’t choose. He can’t open his mouth.

He needs a distraction. He knows it and he can’t say it. He can, after a long few moments of trying, lean into Richie’s arm, and then lean into it harder.

“Yeah?” Richie asks, reaching over to rub Eddie’s forearm.

He’s gotten so good at knowing when Eddie needs something, at guessing what he needs, and the fact that he’s willing - that’s everything to Eddie when he gets stuck like this. He presses his arm up into Richie’s hand. Responding is so much easier than doing anything himself, than making choices, which he’d told Richie in a burst of courage a couple of weeks ago.

“Hey, bud, this isn’t very comfortable, huh?” Richie says. “You wanna move?”

He stands up, though he pulls away from Eddie slowly, like he’s waiting for any protest or hesitation. Once he’s standing, he bends over, gently takes Eddie’s hand in his own, and, when there’s no protest, helps him to his feet. He doesn’t let go, and neither does Eddie.

“Come on,” Richie says, moving them into the living room.

He does let go, then, in order to shove the coffee table off to one side and lay a blanket down on the floor. Then he comes back to Eddie, putting his hands on his shoulders and moving him to the center of the blanket.

“Sit here,” he says, so Eddie does.

Richie moves around him. It’s decently distracting, watching him run around the apartment doing whatever the hell he’s doing, placing pillows and another blanket on the floor near Eddie, grabbing a chair from the kitchen table and then another. He drapes a third blanket across the chairs and uses books to hold them in place, and then he crawls inside the blanket fort.

“Wanna lay down?” he asks.

They barely fit. Richie’s glasses are crooked, and if he does lay down his legs will be sticking entirely outside of the fort. Eddie is worried that if he stays still, if Richie stays still, he’ll lose the small reprieve all of this commotion has brought him, that his chest will tighten again. But he also wants to touch Richie, if he can, if Richie is offering. So he nods.

Richie flops ungracefully onto his back, shoving a pillow under his head and wiggling around a little and flopping his arms out wide. Then he looks over at Eddie, still sitting up, and raises his eyebrows. Eddie lowers himself into Richie’s side, resting his head on his shoulder and his arm across his stomach, curling his hand up into a fist so that he’s not touching too much. Richie lets out a very quiet sound, not moving at all for a second, and Eddie is about to panic, but then Richie’s arms close around him, his hands resting lightly on his shoulder and his upper arm.

“Wanna hear about my stupid ass neighbors?” Richie asks.

Eddie nods, and Richie starts talking, with less volume and fewer gestures than he normally would, knowing Eddie will only half listen. This is distracting in a different way. Eddie doesn’t really want to think about what it means if he touches Richie like this, if he wants to touch Richie like this, he doesn’t want to think about what he wants at all. But he can’t think anymore about his body, his lungs, his breath trapped somewhere halfway down his bronchial tubes. He needs touching Richie to distract him in a different way. He can feel Richie’s chest move against his own as he breathes, and Eddie focuses on that. His breathes are slower and deeper than Eddie’s, fuller. He can pull more air into his lungs than Eddie -

No. Richie is breathing at a steady pace, his chest rising and falling with it, and Eddie can try to match that, try to breathe with him. Maybe then he’ll get back to normal, feeling Richie’s lungs expand and contract. Eddie thinks, sometimes, he can hear his own lungs as if through a stethoscope, like his senses are heightened when he feels like this. It’s like he can hear what’s going wrong.

Eddie’s listened to Richie’s lungs once before. It was a little after he got out of the hospital, before he started to overthink every touch and every look, before he started shoving those thoughts away. It was supposed to be his first night at his own place, his first night alone, after what his friends kept calling sleepovers while they each found new places to live, after nights surrounded by nurses, after sleeping next to Myra for years. 

Richie was the last one to leave, except Eddie didn’t let him. They’d all been sharing hotel beds in different combinations, so it wasn’t weird until it was, until Eddie had a bad dream and freaked out. But Richie groggily tucked him under his arm and put a hand in his hair and Eddie listened to him breathing. It was soothing, at first, but Eddie’s senses were heightened, and it was like he could hear a wheeze, a death rattle, something going wrong in Richie’s chest.

“Rich,” Eddie said. “Stop smoking.”

“Hm?” Richie asked, waking up again.

“You’ve got lungs that work perfectly fine,” Eddie said, trying to sound reasonable, “and you’re messing them up?”

“Hm,” Richie said again, this time quiet and thoughtful in a way he only gets when he’s sleepy.

That’s all he said. But Eddie could tell that it meant he was really thinking about it. And Richie listened. Eddie imagines he can hear the difference now. The damage Richie already did to his lungs can’t be undone, but when Eddie closes his eyes and listens hard, it’s like he can tell they’re clearer now than they were then. Not normal, not perfectly healthy, but better, and steady, something for Eddie to work to match as he half-listens to Richie rambling on about his apartment complex.

“You good?” Richie asks after a bit.

Eddie thinks about it. The answer isn’t exactly yes, but he’s not ready to talk yet, and the answer isn’t no as much as it was before. And he doesn’t want Richie to stop what he’s doing. He nods against Richie’s shoulder.

“Okay,” Richie says. “I figured me yakking away was good, but I wasn’t sure about, you know…”

He squeezes Eddie’s upper arm very gently. After a moment, Eddie nods again. Richie sighs underneath him and loses some stiffness Eddie hadn’t realized was there, too focused on his own.

“You?” Eddie asks, clearing his throat when his voice catches and asking a second time.

“Me?” Richie asks. “Yeah, I’m good. I, uh…”

“What?” Eddie asks.

He feels Richie shift to look down at him. Richie always pays very close attention to whatever helps Eddie start talking again. It’s easier to focus on someone else, to prompt Richie to talk, and Richie is always happy to oblige. Now, though, he hesitates.

Eddie opens his mouth to say something, to tell Richie he doesn’t have to answer, but he doesn’t have the words, and Richie squeezes his shoulder again.

“It’s okay,” he says quickly. “Uh, yeah, this is… It’s nice. It’s nice to…”

Richie pauses.

“Your heart stopped,” he says, quiet. “After It stabbed you. So it’s nice to feel that your heart’s beating in there.”

Eddie’s breath catches. For a moment, he thinks he’s going to panic. It’s not the first time Richie has said something honest, something revealing since they left Derry again. But he usually hedges still, talks around it. For his own benefit and for Eddie’s. Neither of them has been ready.

But Eddie doesn’t panic. He breathes. He takes in a breath at the same time as Richie, and they both let it out slowly, and their hearts by nearby one another. They’re alive. They’re breathing. They’re together. Maybe Eddie’s not ready to think about what it means. Maybe Richie is. Maybe soon Eddie will be, too.

“When you wanna check, you can ask,” Eddie says, because he feels sure and safe for this moment, here in this blanket fort and in Richie’s arms.

“Check what?” Richie asks.

“That my heart is beating,” Eddie says.

He takes Richie’s hand from his shoulder and puts it up against his chest, over his heart, holding it in place.

“Oh,” Richie says, quiet again, holding his head at what must be an uncomfortable angle to look at their hands. “Thanks, Eds.”

There’s a long pause, and for all that Eddie felt great for a moment, his chest tightens again with the uncertainty of what’s going to happen now. Maybe Richie feels it, because he lays his head back down and moves his hand to Eddie’s back, wrapped around him a little more fully now.

“Hey, ask me how that bullshit meeting I had today went,” Richie says, because he knows what Eddie needs.

Eddie does. He rests comfortably against Richie knowing that they’ll talk until Eddie can talk and breathe almost normally. They’ll eat reheated takeout together, probably half inside the blanket fort because they can’t fit all the way sitting up. Richie will be patient, and Eddie will be patient too, until neither of them has to be anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at [coralbluenmbr5](https://twitter.com/coralbluenmbr5)


End file.
